A bipartisan effort addressing the student loan crisis is underway with new legislation aimed at making payments more manageable and reducing defaults. The Dynamic Repayment Act was introduced in the Senate last week by Senators Marco Rubio (R-Fl.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.). Struggling borrowers are no doubt hopeful about possible relief, but no one should hold their breath. Congress will still have to approve.

The average student spends 17 hours a week preparing for class, according to The National Survey of Student Engagement. That includes studying, reading, analyzing data, and doing assignments and lab work. That's far less than the 45 or so hours per week recommended by most schools for students taking 15 credits of coursework, but not every major is equal when it comes to study time.

Consideration of race in admissions will continue at the University of Texas per a federal appeals court ruling this week. In a 2-1 vote, the appeals court upheld an earlier district court ruling which found the school’s use of race as a supplemental factor in bringing together a diverse student population to be fair. However, the school's fight to keep affirmative action is not over.

The good news is that the worldwide workforce is gaining in vital skill sets and abilities. The bad news is that United States workers are lagging behind the rest of the world. And the gap is growing, which is a dangerous trend for the U.S.A.

The race gap has narrowed significantly in college enrollments, with 65 percent of black high school graduates attending college, compared to just under 70 percent of whites in 2011, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. However, the gap in graduation rates remains wide and admission to college has little value if a degree isn’t the end result.

The College Board recently made an announcement about its plans to change the SAT starting spring of 2016. Many believe this news is in response to mounting pressure from critics of standardized testing. Yet, those who have been most critical about tests like the SAT seem to be missing the point.

A recent report released by the Institute for Policy Studies finds that student debt and low-wage faculty labor are rising faster at state universities with the highest-paid presidents. Usually those three hotly debated issues: student debt, increased use of part-time faculty, and inflated executive pay are discussed as separate issues, but researchers wondered if the three were related. What they found shows that all three are connected in ways worthy of a Charles Dickens novel.

Last month, Google revealed, for the first time ever, just how big the company’s gender gap is. Only 30 percent of Google’s overall employees are women and when looking specifically at tech-related jobs, the number drops to 17 percent. As it turns out, Google isn’t the only tech company with alarmingly low numbers of women.

Want to get that bachelor's degree you’ve always wanted, but couldn’t afford? Become a barista. The Starbucks Corporation announced Monday that it's going to finance online degrees for employees via Arizona State University. The Starbucks College Achievement Plan, the first of its kind, will be available to U.S. Starbucks employees working at least 20 hours a week.

According to a recent report by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, some older students are actually leaving school to return to an improving job market. Since last year, enrollment dropped by 0.8 percent; over the previous year, enrollment declined 2.3 percent.

Yesterday, President Barack Obama sat down with Tumblr founder David Karp to do a live Q&A on the service, answering questions about student loans and his recent executive order expanding the Pay-as-You-Earn program.

Feeling pressured to gain acceptance to an elite college? Don’t. According to a new Gallup-Purdue University study, it’s not where you study that matters in life, but what happens while you’re there. Researchers surveyed 30,000 college graduates and found that a person’s overall well-being and engagement in their work after college has little to do with where they went to school, but rather is influenced by the formative experiences they had while they were there.

Finding a college professor to mentor you may not be easy, unless you’re a white male or at least appear to be one by name alone. In a recent study of more than 6,500 professors at the top 250 schools, researchers found that professors were more likely to deny opportunities to women and minorities -- a bias that appears after only knowing a student's name. This is especially evident in faculty linked to more lucrative professions.

The Class of 2014 may not have to don fast food uniforms after the caps and gowns come off. Employers that hire new grads are feeling optimistic about the market and plan to hire 8.6 percent more college graduates this year as compared to last. Starting salaries for this year's class are also up by 1.2 percent, all this according to a recent survey released by The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE).

Life after high school or at a time of transition is like a Choose Your Own Adventure novel, and sometimes seeing that you have choices is all that matters. Here’s a list of ideas that will jump-start your brainstorming if traditional college is not for you.

Recently, Slate's Matthew Yglesias argued against donating large amounts of money to wealthy schools like Harvard University. His position is that Ivy League schools already have huge endowments, and that most of the students attending these elite schools have wealthy families supporting them financially.

The news about top colleges and universities accepting fewer and fewer applicants each year may be alarming, but it is also complicated. Instead of giving up, take critical look at how and why this is happening.

Unpaid internships were designed for students to get valuable training outside of the classroom. Some professions require supervised internship hours toward graduation and licensure. Unfortunately, the internship seems to have evolved into a default position that job seekers take to avoid not having anything at all. This is a problem, and it is also in some cases illegal.

Many students graduate with epic amounts of student loan debt -- unless they attend one of seven work colleges in the US. These colleges require students to be employed at the school in any one of a variety of roles, both to earn money for tuition and to gain real-life work experience as they go, thus making college more affordable.